Health care bill gets Mary Landrieu's stamp of approval

Time is short, the political maneuvering tense and the ultimate vote will be tight, but Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., emerged from a White House meeting with President Barack Obama on Tuesday as a full-throated enthusiast for the Senate health care bill Democrats want to enact by Christmas.

Times-Picayune archive'Senate Democrats have developed a consensus that combines the best blend of private and public approaches to reduce cost, expand coverage and increase choice and competition for Americans,' U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu said Tuesday.

"While many of us expressed cost and bureaucracy concerns about early drafts of health care reform legislation, it is clear that the product the Senate is debating is a dramatic improvement," Landrieu said Tuesday evening.

"Senate Democrats have developed a consensus that combines the best blend of private and public approaches to reduce cost, expand coverage and increase choice and competition for Americans."

Landrieu's statement, issued under the headline, "Now is the Time to Pass Health Care Reform," is the most positive she has issued about the health care plan, which has been the subject of intensive negotiations in recent weeks. It came a few hours after Landrieu and nearly all Senate Democrats met with the president at the White House to talk about what he described as a historic opportunity they dare not squander.

"And from the discussions we had it's clear that we are on the precipice of an achievement that's eluded Congresses and presidents for generations -- an achievement that will touch the lives of nearly every American," Obama said after the afternoon meeting.

Republicans, and some protesters outside the Capitol, continued to hope that the very delicate patchwork of the Senate compromise plan that has emerged in recent days will prove too tenuous and fraught with contradictions to survive, and that public ire will give enough senators pause to send the efforts back to the drawing board.

"I hope we're able to defeat a government takeover of health care and then bring the president back to the table to have a real good discussion," Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, said in a Republican Party conference call with Reps. John Fleming, R-Minden, and Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette.

"I'm hopeful the American people will intervene," Scalise said. "The American people are irate about these attempts to impose a government takeover of health care."

The most recent development in the uncertain progress of health-care overhaul came even as the Senate defeated an amendment Tuesday evening that would have allowed the reimportation of prescription drugs from other countries so that American consumers can pay the far lower costs charged abroad for the same prescription pharmaceuticals they buy here.

The amendment, sponsored by Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., was co-sponsored by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., for whom it has been a signature issue. While it gained 51 votes to 48 against, it, required 60 votes for passage. The vote was anything but party line. Landrieu voted "no."

While Obama has said he backs drug re-importation, Vitter blamed the measure's defeat on a deal struck earlier this year between the administration and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, in which PhRMA promised to back a health-care overhaul and contribute $80 billion over 10 years to help cover the costs. PhRMA is dead set against re-importation, which it said would threaten public safety. Proponents of re-importation say that the only thing at risk is drug industry profits.

"This is a crystal clear choice between doing something that can make a difference in people's lives or sticking to the big political deal that was made inside the beltway, a choice between doing what's right for the American people or voting for politics as usual," Vitter said.

But PhRMA Senior Vice President Ken Johnson said after the vote, "we believe that if health reform is done in a smart way, prescription drug importation is not necessary because most Americans will finally have health insurance and access to safe and secure prescription medicines."

Landrieu's positive comments came three weeks since she provided a pivotal vote to enable the Senate to proceed to debate a bill about which she, at the time, described herself as deeply ambivalent. Landrieu's enthusiasm owes much to the changes wrought by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut Independent who caucuses with the Democrats and whose vote they need to muster the 60 votes to block a Republican filibuster and pass a bill. Lieberman, like Landrieu, opposed the inclusion of a public option in the bill, and his threat of opposition, along with the resistance to a public plan by Landrieu and Sens. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and Ben Nelson, R-Neb., succeeded in eliminating the provision in the Senate bill.

In the GOP conference call both Scalise and Fleming insisted that even a Senate plan stripped of any public option or Medicare buy-in would lead to a government takeover, and that proponents of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all-system, are essentially seeking to enact national health on the installment plan, one step at a time.

"This is not a single-payer system but it gets us 80-percent of the way there," Fleming said of the Democratic plans in both the House and Senate. "All you have to do is pass one more bill or two down the road and you're practically there."

Some members of the Congress on the left have said they can't support a bill that does not include some kind of public option -- a government-run plan. But, Landrieu said in her statement that, "although we eliminated the public option, about 900,000 Louisianians who do not currently have insurance and 200,000 residents who have non-group insurance could get affordable coverage through the health insurance exchange."

"For the 70 percent of Louisiana families that make less than $88,000 a year, the government would offer an affordability subsidy to help them purchase insurance, and a Medicaid expansion would bring health care coverage to more working families. Small businesses get help too," she said. "In Louisiana, more than 50,000 small businesses could be helped by small business tax credits to make premiums for their employees more affordable"

Altogether, Landrieu said, "if this bill is passed, 31 million uninsured Americans would have access to quality health care coverage," and the bill would shore up "Medicare for seniors, and extended the Medicare Trust Fund for an additional nine years."

"These are monumental gains that will help restore fiscal responsibility to a system that has run amok with waste, fraud and abuse," Landrieu said. "While there is still some work to do, I am confident that we have found enough common ground for the Senate to seize this historic opportunity. I look forward to moving this legislation forward before the holiday recess."

Jonathan Tilove can be reached at jtilove@timespicayune.com or 202.383.7827.